


you said "we're cuffed to the past," you found the key

by Anonymous



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Past Sexual Assault, kinda hurt/comfort, more detailed cws in notes, much more focused on processing/aftermath than the actual event
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29646090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: What the hell was he supposed to do? He’s pissed and he’s desperate and he just found out he’s practically dying,again, and his skin is itching with the feeling he’s stuck back in the worst summer of his life.Or: Luke processes some trauma.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 49
Collections: Anonymous





	you said "we're cuffed to the past," you found the key

**Author's Note:**

> There are no explicit descriptions of sex acts, but the fic is focused on Luke recalling and processing being sexually assaulted when he was 15, please be careful if that's triggering for you.
> 
> There's also some swearing, in case that's something ppl want to avoid.
> 
> Title is from "Sirens" by Make Out Monday.

_“That’s some club you guys got going on.”_

Willie looked so fucking _wounded_ when Luke said it, but what the hell was he supposed to do? He’s pissed and he’s desperate and he just found out he’s practically dying, _again_ , and his skin is itching with the feeling he’s stuck back in the worst summer of his life. 

It never goes away, but it’s been a while since he’s let himself really think about it. He was fifteen; he’d been playing with the guys for ages but they were still pretty new to actually performing—it was the year Luke proposed the ambush strategy so they could do more than bookclubs and coffee shop open mic nights.

They were out almost every night that summer, playing until the sun rose or they got kicked to the curb. It was epic. Their first gig at Solstice was the same as all the rest—not exactly officially booked, but they totally rocked it.

Luke thought so, anyway. Before they left, the club’s owner, or manager, or something (Luke still isn’t sure. Someone with power, in any case) cornered him and told him off for performing without a booking or permission. It wasn’t anything new; they’d been kicked out of plenty of places before, and by now Luke was pretty good at sweet-talking his way out of it. 

But then it _was_ something new, and she was whispering in his ear and pulling him into another room and telling him she wouldn’t make a fuss about it if he did what she told him. 

She told him he was pretty alright, for someone with so little experience. She told him he was gonna make a girl really happy someday. She told him he was lucky he had someone to show him how to do this properly, how to _really_ satisfy someone.

She grinned at him and told him he and his band were welcome to come back any time.

He’s positive that he said okay, that he agreed, that he went along with it and didn’t fight back. 

It doesn’t make it any less messed up. Christ, he was _fifteen_. 

They did go back to Solstice a couple times. He told himself a dozen different things to make it seem okay. He’d said yes. She probably didn’t realize how young he was. She wasn’t hurting anything, she was just going after what she wanted, like he was. It’d be a dick move to make her feel guilty for something he could have said no to from the start, if he’d really wanted to. Besides, he didn’t want to screw up the only consistent gig they had. 

So they kept going back. Luke did his best to duck away from Alison, to make sure he stayed in the light or with one of his boys, to avoid being alone with her. It was a constant string in his head—okay, let me just stay near the bar, let me find someone to dance with, where’s Alex where’s Bobby where’s Reggie—

Somehow it never worked, and she always found a way to him anyway.

He finally snapped in August. Not at _her_ , never at her, he’ll always be too much of a coward to confront her directly. Not at anyone, really. But he felt something snap inside him, and he told the guys he wasn’t ever playing at Solstice again.

They didn’t get it. It was consistent, it was a pretty decent venue, it was what they needed so they could work their way up, wasn’t that what Luke wanted in the first place? Bobby kept pushing and Reggie kept complaining that he didn’t get it and Alex kept trying to figure out what was wrong and it was all just—too much.

The thing was, _Luke_ didn’t know what was wrong either, or at least he didn’t know how to make sense of _why_ it felt so wrong. It took months to process it, and even now it feels impossibly overwhelming to call it rape or sexual assault.

But he’s at least able to say she took advantage of him—of a _kid_ — and it was fucked up, and it shouldn’t have happened. And once he got there and he had the words for it, keeping it to himself felt like acid dissolving him from the inside out.

It wasn’t like he could tell his parents—they were paranoid enough as it was about him going out to clubs; they’d never let him do _anything_ again if they knew. His dad would want to take some kind of legal action and his mom would refuse to let him out of her sight. They wouldn’t get that it’s impossible to move on when you’re stuck in your parents’ house forever with no options.

So he couldn’t tell his parents. But he had his band.

Luke never really _tells_ people what’s going on with him, he just shoves it all into a song and lets them take it from there. But he just . . . he couldn’t, with this. He didn’t stop her from putting his hands all over him and his career and his summer, but something in him wouldn’t let her get into his music, too.

He told Bobby first. The odds were 60/40 between him being cool about it and him brushing it off and acting like a dick, and both of those options were easier to deal with than Alex and Reg freaking out. Assholes are easy to manage: you just bite back. But Luke’s never been great at handling concern or pity.

Bobby was the right person to tell, though. He didn’t panic, and he wasn’t an asshole. He just listened as Luke fumbled through the whole messy story, and swore up and down once he was finished that they’d burn that place to the ground one day. 

And he started taking Luke’s side any time the other guys asked why they couldn’t just go back to Solstice.

Alex was the hardest person to tell, and not just because the dude’s wound tighter than a cheap alarm clock. It had taken them _months_ to get back to normal after they broke up, and Luke didn’t think he could go that long again without the fist bumps and side hugs and friendly shoves and casually leaning against each other. He needed everything to stay normal; he couldn’t go back to Alex hesitating and apologizing every time they touched.

It wasn’t even being touched that bothered Luke, anyway. If anything, it helped—it reminded him that he was _here_ , he was with his boys, he was safe and home and not alone. 

He was okay. He needed Alex to know he was okay, even as he told him about the most not-okay he’d ever been. 

He remembers stumbling through that part of the conversation, trying as hard as he could to get it right. “It didn’t—I’m not—I mean, it’s—” He blew out a breath, frustrated with struggling to find the words he needed. “It _was_ a big deal. I mean, it is, and it’s _fucked up_ and I hate it, but I’m . . . I’m still Luke, okay? I’m not gonna break, you don’t have to look at me like I’m gonna break.”

“Okay,” Alex had said. “Okay.” He reached towards Luke’s hand. “Is this . . . cool?”

Luke rolled his eyes, but he smiled too. “This is exactly what I’m talking about, dumbass.” He pulled his friend into a tight hug. “Of course it’s cool.”

It was easier, telling Reggie. Luke still hated the pity and the panic, but he had practice by now, and Alex helped him through the conversation. Really, the worst part was convincing Reggie that vandalizing the place wasn’t worth the trouble. (Alex helped with that part, too. Bobby decidedly did not).

Obviously telling them didn’t fix what had happened, but it was so good, knowing his band had his back. He never wrote a song about Alison. Instead, he wrote “My Name Is Luke” about everything else—about his music and his family and his dreams, all the people and things that mattered to him. All the things he _wanted_ to define him.

Because he’s _not_ just a scared kid, and he’s not about to let anyone treat him like it.

He can’t will away what it did to him, though, no matter how stubborn he is. There’s no way to get back that summer, or all the months after it consumed by confusion and anger and barely-contained panic. No way to stop feeling sick whenever he smells caramel, no way to get rid of the nightmares, or the way he still flinches every time someone calls him Lucas, or how he can’t stand wearing sleeves anymore, or the jolt of terror he used to feel every time a teacher asked him to stay after class alone.

And above all of that, there’s no getting rid of the anger that came to life that year. Maybe it always would have happened—it feels like something that had been sleeping under his skin for years and got woken up too soon. Either way, it sits curled like a dragon in his chest, always, and lights him up inside more often than he wants.

It’s such a stupid simile, and he’d never say it aloud to anyone, but it really is like a dragon—a guardian dragon, if that were a thing. Something that lies in wait and jumps out at any sign of a threat, something trying so hard to protect that vulnerable fifteen-year-old who’s still part of him.

Luke isn’t really mad at Willie, he knows that. Stupid dragon freaked out and shot the messenger because “you have no choice but to do what this guy says” feels like a one-way ticket back to summer ‘93.

But Willie's just a kid like him. He’s stuck in a life (afterlife? whatever) that he can’t make his own—he has everything he wanted, but some powerful asshole took _himself_ away from him. He stole the agency. It doesn’t count if you don’t get to choose it, and it’s not a choice if the alternative is double-death. He’s trapped. 

Luke wishes the feeling wasn’t so familiar. 

He shakes his hands out, stands up. He needs to go find Willie.


End file.
